Tf The belief in the Divinity of Christ is waning among us. They who hold it have petrified it into a theological dogma without life or warmth, and thoughtful men are more and more beginning to put it aside. How are we then to get back this belief in the Son of God — by authority or by the old way of persecution ?
^ H. Scott Holland, Crud and ChararUr, 3.
ST. JOHN I. 14 29
The time for these has passed. The other way is to begin at the beginning. Begin as the Bible begins, with Christ the Son of Man. Begin with Him as God's character revealed under the limitations of humanity. Lay the foundations of a higher faith deeply in a belief of His Humanity. See Him as He was. Breathe His spirit. After that, try to comprehend His Life. Enter into His Childhood. Feel with Him when He looked round about Him in anger, when He vindicated the crushed woman from the powerless venom of her ferocious accusers; — when He stood alone in the solitary Majesty of Truth in Pilate's judgment-hall; when the light of the Eoman soldiers' torches flashed on Kedron in the dark night, and He knew that watching was too late ; when His heart-strings gave way upon the Cross. Walk with Him through the Marriage Feast. See how the sick and weary came to Him instinctively ; how men, when they saw Him, felt their sin, they knew not why, and fell at His feet; how guilt unconsciously revealed itself, and all that was good in men was drawn out, and they became higher than themselves in His presence. Kealize this. Live with Him till He becomes a living thought — ever present — and you will find a reverence growing up which compares with nothing else in human feeling. You will feel that a slighting word spoken of Him wounds with a dart more sharp than personal insult. You will feel that to bow at the name of Jesus is no form at will of others, but a relief and welcome. And if it should ever chance that, finding yourself thrown upon your own self, and cut off from sects — suspected, in quest of a truth which no man gives, — then that wondrous sense of strength and friendship comes, the being alone with Christ, with the strength of a manlier independence. Slowly then, this almost insensibly merges into adoration. For what is it to adore Christ ? To call Him God ; to say Lord, Lord ? No. Adoration is the mightiest love the soul can give — call it by what name you will.^
4. The one supremely significant fact in the universe is, to quote Dr. Peabody's fine paraphrase, " the transformation of language into life." We see this transformation in three different moments. There was the creation at the beginning, when great vitalizing words of God took form in created beings. Again there is the same transformation in all human work and morality to the end, when man is hearing words of God within him and is transforming them into deeds and finished products. But
^ F. W. Robertson, in Life arid Letters^ 417.
30 THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD
between these two there stands the stupendous fact of Christ, interpreting the first and inspiring the second. ^y/^ (1) Creation. — It is matter of general consent that the universe as we know it had a beginning. As thought travels backward into the great silence before that beginning, it must needs discover a moment when the eternal thought found expression, and the universe began. The word became flesh. God spoke, and the thing spoken stood out as a created fact. " The universe is God's language." The unspoken word is all that might be; the spoken word is all that is. This is the meaning of those wonderful stories of Genesis, in which we see all things coming forth in their mighty evolution in answer to the words of God.
That is the Christian view of nature and the universe. It is not an eternally grinding machine, nor is it a dream-picture woven of mist. It is a real universe, in which God's language is trans- formed into life. The great words were spoken, and there are the mountains and the fields and the seas, and the ships upon the seas and the cities of men. It makes all the difference in the world whether as we stand in the midst of all these things we hear only a jangle of meaningless sounds, or whether we hear the word of the Lord. Listen to that word in the summer fields and sunshine, in the winter storms and the voice of the tossing seas. Listen, too, in the crowded streets, the throb of machinery and traffic, the bustle and the gentle speech of homes. In new thought and adventurous policy, in great loyalties to ancient institutions ; in the voices of teachers in schools, of preachers in pulpits, of business men in offices, of shopkeepers in shops; in the heart- beatings of the lonely and the sobs of the penitent — everywhere creation is the word become flesh.
(2) Jesus Christ. — The word had been spoken in an unknown tongue. We heard it, and saw its incarnate forms, but we did not understand. Science was patiently deciphering it, retrans- lating it back from life to language; endeavouring from the manifest facts of the universe to spell out the meaning of the Word of God. But science finds it difficult, and conscience and love find it far more difficult to understand. The Divine Word has seemed to change and suffer in the process of becoming flesh. Its meaning is obscure, and it seems to have been mingled with much other speech that is not Divine,